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Buddhism in Ancient Egypt and Meroe – Beliefs Revealed Through Ancient Script
ෆ්ලින්ඩර්ස් නම් ඊජිප්තු ඉතිහාසඥයා මේ බැව් සාක්ෂි සහිතව පෙන්වා දී ඇත.අශෝක අධිරාජයාගේ ධර්ම දුත කණ්ඩායම් ලොව සිව් දෙස බුදුදහම විකාශණය කරමින් ගිය බැව් පිළිබඳව සාක්ෂි හමුවී ඇත.මේ ලිපිය බලන්න...
Did Buddhism exist in Upper Egypt and the Lower Meroitic Empire? The answer appears to be yes. It was in Memphis that English Egyptologist and archaeologist W. M. Flinders Petrie found evidence of Buddhist colony.
The Buddhist Colony
Flinders Petrie claimed these Buddhists dated back to the Persian period of Egypt (circa 525-405 BC). He wrote:“on the right side, at the top is the Tibetan Mongolian, below that the Aryan woman of the Punjab, and at the base a seated figure in Indian attitude with the scarf over the left shoulder. These are the first remains of Indians known on the Mediterranean. Hitherto there have been no material evidences for that connection which is stated to have existed, both by embassies from Egypt and Syria to India, and by the great Buddhist mission sent by Ashoka as far west as Greece and Cyrene. We seem now to have touched the Indian colony in Memphis, and we may hope for more light on that connection which seems to have been so momentous for Western thought”.If Petrie’s dating is correct this puts Buddhists in Egypt two hundred years before Ashoka sent Buddhist missionaries to Egypt.
Ashoka Rock Inscription
Ashoka built a temple at Sarnath, which is called Lion Capital of Ashoka . In Buddhism lions represent the bodhisattvas, the “sons of the Buddha”. The bodhisattvas are beings who have attained a high degree of spiritual development.
Ashoka was a supporter of Buddhism. Zacharias P. Thundy, in Buddha and Christ makes it clear that the edits of Ashoka (circa 274-236 BC) indicate that this ruler sent missionaries to Egypt to preach the Buddhist Dharma.
Thundy maintains that archaeological evidence exist for a community of Indian sages living in Memphis as early as 200 BC. We know that descendants of these missionaries were still in Egypt over two hundred years later because they were visited by Apollonius of Tyana.
Ashoka used the ancient script Kharosthi to write his edicts. The Buddhist also used this writing system to record their scriptures. This means that the Gymnosophists would have had a long tradition of employing Kharosthi to communicate their ideas. The Gymnosophists were probably well respected by the Meroites and some Meroites probably had knowledge of Buddhist teachings and literacy.
The Appearance of Blemmyae
Some Meroites may have played an important role in Buddhism because Blemmyae, a prominent group in the Meroitic Sudan are mentioned in Pali text Tipitaka.Dr. Derrett wrote that in the early Pali text “we have a Blemmya (an African) in front rank Buddhist texts of very respectable age. The Buddhist text where Blemmya were mentioned are very old. The Vinaya Pitaka , is dated to the fourth century BCE.
If Blemmya are mentioned in Buddhists text, we can be sure that Meroites (ancient kingdom of Kush) were not ignorant of Kharosthi. This would explain why many of the Meroitic symbols agree with Kharosthi. They agree because some Meroites were probably already literate in Kharosthi due to the influence of Buddhism in the Meroitic Empire.
There seems to have been a second migration of Buddhists to the Meroitic Empire many years after Ashoka sent missionaries to Egypt. These migrants came to the Meroitic Empire after their king was murdered.
